McCarthy says he’ll meet Biden on Wednesday to talk debt ceiling

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he will meet with President Biden on Wednesday to discuss the debt ceiling.

“We’re going to meet this Wednesday,” McCarthy told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation. “I know the president said he didn’t want to have any discussions, but I think it’s very important that our whole government is designed to find compromise.”

Biden and White House officials have said they’d be willing to work in a bipartisan fashion to avoid the country defaulting on its debts but that they would not make concessions on spending cuts in order to do so. The U.S. reached its borrowing limit earlier this month and has until June to either raise or suspend the debt ceiling before defaulting.

Some GOP House members have not ruled out making cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but McCarthy reiterated Sunday that such cuts are “off the table.”

McCarthy added that there was some “wasteful spending” when it came to the budget but that he does not want to put the country’s finances in “jeopardy.”

“So I want to sit down together, work out an agreement that we can move forward to put us on a path of balance, at the same time not put any of our debt in jeopardy at the same time,” he said.

The Hill reached out to the White House for comment.